Twelve dead in Gaza raid

Palestinian sources say 12 people have been killed and many more injured during an Israeli incursion in the Gaza Strip.

A force of 40 Israeli tanks supported by Apache helicopters entered the Palestinian city of Khan Younis and its adjacent refugee camp in the early hours of Monday morning.

Palestinian hospital sources say a further eight people were injured when Israeli machine gun fire and a tank shell hit a hospital to which the dead and injured were being taken after the earlier incursion.

The Israeli army said the operation had been launched to destroy "terrorist infrastructure" in the area and soldiers discovered explosives and bomb-making equipment and made one arrest.

Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has pledged revenge - saying in a statement that "the killing of civilians must be punished by the killing of civilians".

Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials say the local head of the Palestinian riot police, Rageh Abu Lehiya, has been shot dead.

Witnesses said he was removed from a car with his hands tied and killed by masked gunmen. There has been no word on who carried out the attack.

Witnesses said the Israeli forces met strong resistance from Palestinian gunmen.

Ten of the Palestinian deaths were reported to have occurred when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile near a crowd of Palestinians as they emerged from their shelters, having heard the Israeli tanks pulling out.


The Israeli military commander in the area has said that as the army withdrew, it fired on gunmen who emerged from hiding. Witnesses say the crowd were civilians.

At least three civilians - a woman, a child and an elderly man - were reported by hospital officials to be among the dead.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called on the international community to protect the Palestinians and said the raid was timed to disrupt the visit of Javier Solana, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, to the region.

"Every time we witness efforts to revive the peace process and put it back on track, like those being exerted now by Solana, the Israeli Government moves to conduct such war crimes and murder innocent civilians because the end game is to resume full occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank," Mr Erekat said.

Front line

The BBC's Barbara Plett in Gaza says Khan Younis is one of the bloodiest frontlines of resistance in the conflict.


As a Hamas stronghold, Khan Younis is on the frontline of the conflict

She says the city, home to 100,000 Palestinian refugees, has been increasingly encircled by Jewish settlements and Israeli military bases.

It is a stronghold of the Islamist Hamas movement, responsible for some of the suicide attacks against Israelis.

The fresh bloodshed came Javier Solana prepared for talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Mr Solana had spent Sunday with Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

He is in the region to push a peace plan drawn up by the quartet - the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the EU - aimed at persuading Israeli troops to withdraw from the West Bank and the Palestinians to reform their governing authority.

Israel is continuing to occupy a string of Palestinian cities in the West Bank where the army imposes military curfews on civilians, saying the tactic helps prevent suicide attacks